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Cleveland Orchestra returns to Severance Hall (Sept. 19 & 21)

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by Daniel Hathaway

A compact Schubert symphony, the first half of a Prokofiev ballet score, and both neoclassical and full-out-Romantic works by Richard Strauss were on the docket as Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra returned to Severance Hall last weekend to begin the ensemble’s 102nd season. Thursday evening’s subscription concert on September 19 began with a stylish reading of Schubert’s Third Symphony, a spirited work festooned with amiable melodic fragments you probably couldn’t go away whistling, but that gave the 18-year-old composer an abundance of cheerful material to play with.

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Cleveland Opera Theater moves to Playhouse Square with La Bohème (Sept. 13)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Puccini’s La Bohème was produced 598 times worldwide during the 2017-2018 season, making it the fourth most-performed title in the repertoire (trailing La traviata, Carmen, and The Magic Flute). It’s also the show that Cleveland Opera Theater chose for its move from venues like the Masonic Auditorium and the Maltz Performing Arts Center to the Ohio Theater, a more traditionally-outfitted house. On Friday, September 13, Scott Skiba’s clever production surrounded a fine cast with memorable scenic design by Matthew D. McCarren and projections by Brittany Merenda that brought a Parisian garret, the Café Momus, and a toll gate outside the city vividly to life in Playhouse Square.

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CIPC Concert Series culminates in Wosner-Weiss piano duo (Sept. 14)

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by Daniel Hathaway

In the last event in its concert series before it turns its attention to the 2020 contest, the Cleveland International Piano Competition presented duo-pianists Shai Wosner and Orion Weiss in a viscerally thrilling and intellectually stimulating recital on Saturday evening, September 14 in Reinberger Chamber Hall at Severance Hall.

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Meints and friends to play all 15 of Purcell’s fantasias for viol consort 

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by Daniel Hathaway

Oberlin Conservatory viola da gamba and cello professor Catharina Meints has invited former and current students to join her in performing Henry Purcell’s 15 fantasias for consorts of three to seven viols on Friday, September 13 at 7:30 pm in Oberlin’s Kulas Recital Hall.

The seven gambists will play instruments from the collection assembled by Meints and her late husband James Caldwell, most of them having been made during Purcell’s own lifetime (he died in 1695).

People who take up the viola da gamba, that Renaissance and Baroque instrument that comes in different sizes, looks like a cello, has frets like a guitar, and which inspired the film Tous les Matins du Monde, quickly fall in love with the instrument and its repertoire.

“It’s relatively easy to play, there’s a massive amount of accessible but intellectually interesting music that’s been written for it, and most of that is consort music to be played with friends,” Meints said in a conversation in her Oberin studio. “ [Read more…]

Ehnes & Armstrong to play complete
Beethoven violin sonatas
on CCMS Series

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by Daniel Hathaway

The Cleveland Chamber Music Society will take a bit of a different tack for its 70th Anniversary Season in 2019-2020. Violinist James Ehnes and pianist Andrew Armstrong will appear in three of the nine concerts, performing Beethoven’s complete Sonatas for violin and piano, a series that will be presented at the Maltz Performing Arts Center in University Circle on September 17, January 14, and April 21.

Concerts at the Society’s customary venue, Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights, will include the Jerusalem Quartet (October 22), the Dover Quartet (December 3), the Apollon Musagète Quartet (February 4), and Chanticleer (March 3).

Other exceptions to the Plymouth Church location: pianist Till Fellner will play a recital in Mixon Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music on November 12, and the series will end back at the Maltz Center on May 5 with a performance by violinist David Bowlin and the Albers Trio.

I reached James Ehnes at his home in Florida last week and began by asking how the idea of performing all of Beethoven’s ten violin sonatas originated. [Read more…]

CIPC Concert Series:
15 minutes with Shai Wosner

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by Daniel Hathaway

The final event in the Cleveland International Piano Competition’s 2019 Concert Series will feature the duo-piano team of Orion Weiss and Shai Wosner in music by Schubert, Brahms, and David Lang on Saturday, September 14 at 8:00 pm in Reinberger Chamber Hall at Severance Hall.

The recital reunites two longtime friends and colleagues and introduces the Israeli-born Wosner to Cleveland (Weiss, born in Gates Mills, is well-known in these parts). I caught up with Shai Wosner by telephone earlier this month and began by asking whether he and Weiss have played this particular program before.

Shai Wosner: We performed it at the Kennedy Center earlier this year, and will play it in New Mexico next month. We’re having a great time with it.

Daniel Hathaway: You and Orion have a long history of performing together.

SW: We go back nearly twenty years. For a long time we were each doing our own thing, but a few years ago we thought it was time to play together again. We had this unusual idea for a program with two huge pieces. [Read more…]

Oberlin’s second opening festival to consider “End of Life, End of Time”

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by Daniel Hathaway

Last September, Oberlin violin professor Sibbi Bernhardsson was the catalyst for a two-day festival, “Creative Arts & Music in the Shadow of War,” marking the centenary of the end of World War I with four concerts, two panel discussions, and parallel events at Oberlin’s Allen Art Museum.

That festival built on Bernhardsson’s fascination with music written during The Great War, and proved to be a great success. “Although the topic was somber, it ended up being an energizing and fun project — a way to collaborate with different professors in the College and the Conservatory, and a great opportunity for students to kick off the school year and see the faculty in action as performers and speakers,” the violinist said in a telephone conversation. “Since Oberlin has so many intellectual and musical resources, I wanted to do some kind of compelling project as a follow-up.”

The impetus for this year’s Festival came from Bernhardsson’s colleagues, who wanted to perform Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, written and performed in a German prisoner-of-war camp in 1941. “It’s such a great and important work that it’s not the kind of piece you play on a Sunday afternoon faculty recital and then go out and have a dessert afterward. But it occurred to me that maybe it would be a great work to build a festival around.” [Read more…]

Katelyn Emerson inaugurates new Fritts organ at First Lutheran Lorain (Aug. 25)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Boats are traditionally launched with a bottle of champagne broken across the bow, organs with an inaugural recital. The new Fritts organ in First Lutheran Church Lorain was officially welcomed on Sunday afternoon, August 25, with a far-ranging program impressively played by Katelyn Emerson. Absent any liquid bubbly, there was plenty of musical effervescence to delight a crowd that overflowed into the adjacent space and required more programs to be distributed during intermission. [Read more…]

New organ for First Lutheran Lorain continues Boe & Brombaugh legacy

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by Daniel Hathaway

The staff and parishioners of Lorain’s First Lutheran Church must have found images of the burning of Notre-Dame de Paris last April especially poignant. In August of 2014, arson reduced their sanctuary to rubble, taking with it the church’s stained glass windows and its historically important organ built by John Brombaugh in 1970.

On Sunday, August 25, nearly five years to the day after that conflagration, the church will formally inaugurate a new instrument by Paul Fritts of Tacoma, Washington in a 3:00 pm recital by Katelyn Emerson. The recitalist, who graduated from Oberlin in 2015 with degrees in organ performance and French and is now based in Stuttgart, Germany, will play a varied program of music by Lübeck, J.S. Bach, Muffat, Bridge, Brahms, and Franck, as well as the premiere of a commissioned work by Aaron David Miller. The recital is free.

Music director Brian Wentzel said in a recent telephone conversation that working on the project of a new sanctuary and organ has been a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. “It’s one that I never imagined I’d have. But it’s been very fulfilling, and a joy to work with Paul Fritts and his crew. I’m very pleased with the result.” [Read more…]

Classical music events to catch during the rest of the summer

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by Daniel Hathaway

Classical music events begin spiraling down into the Dog Days of August this week, beginning with Ohio Light Opera, which will present final performances of Perchance to Dream (above) and Girl Crazy on Wednesday the 7th at 2:00 and 7:30 pm, The Devil’s Rider and Music in the Air on Thursday the 8th at 2:00 and 7:30 pm, South Pacific and Into the Woods on Friday the 9th at 2:00 pm and 7:30 pm, and Pirates of Penzance on Saturday the 10th at 2:00. Hurry to Freedlander Theater on the campus of The College of Wooster before the company packs it in for 2019. Tickets here.

The Cleveland Orchestra will be busy in several modes through the end of the month. Its Star-Spangled Spectacular — postponed from Independence Day because of the All-Star Game — takes place on Mall B downtown on Wednesday the 7th at 9:00 pm (catch it, if not in person, on the stream at ideastream.org). [Read more…]

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